Website care plans, and what should be in one

Care plan, maintenance plan, support retainer, website management. The names vary and so does what sits behind them. Two plans at the same monthly price can cover completely different things, and the difference usually only shows on the day something goes wrong.

Not every website needs one. Plenty do, and for those the useful question is not the price but what is actually included, in writing.

What a care plan is for

A website is not finished when it launches. The software underneath it keeps changing. WordPress, its plugins and its theme release updates, many of them security fixes. Certificates and domains renew. Hosting companies upgrade their servers. Each of these is small, and left alone for a year they add up to a site that is slow, vulnerable or broken.

A care plan pays someone to keep on top of that, so the site keeps working without you having to think about it. It is closer to servicing a van than to building one.

What should be in one

• Updates, tested. Core, plugins and theme kept current, with someone checking the site still works afterwards. Updates prevent more problems than anything else, and occasionally cause one, which is why the checking matters.
• Backups, stored elsewhere. Regular copies of the site and its database, kept somewhere other than the server the site runs on.
• Restores that have been tried. A backup nobody has ever restored is a hope, not a backup. Ask when the last test restore was.
• Uptime monitoring. Something checking the site every few minutes, so the person responsible hears it is down before a customer tells you.
• Security basics. Watching for unusual logins, removing unused plugins and accounts, keeping an eye on anything flagged as vulnerable.
• A named way to report a problem, and a stated response time.
• Small changes. Many plans include a set amount of time each month for text updates, a new photo or a staff change. Worth knowing the limit.

What is usually not in one

A care plan keeps an existing site healthy. It is not normally a way to get new work done in small monthly instalments. Redesigns, new features, new pages beyond the small-change allowance, search campaigns and content writing are usually separate. That is fair, as long as it is stated rather than discovered.

The other common gap is the layers around the site. A plan may cover the WordPress site and nothing else, leaving the domain, the DNS and the email to you. When a website goes down, the fault is often in one of those layers, and it helps to know in advance whether your plan reaches it.

Do you need one?

It depends on what the site is built on and what it does.

Hosted website builders such as Squarespace, Wix or Shopify handle the software updates themselves. A care plan for one of these is mostly about content changes and someone to ask, and many businesses manage without.

A self-hosted WordPress site needs updating by someone. If that is you, and you are comfortable doing it with a backup taken first, you may not need a plan. If nobody is doing it, you need one or you need to start.

A site that takes bookings, payments or enquiries is a working part of the business. An hour of downtime has a cost, and the case for someone watching it is much stronger.

Where care plans go wrong

• It is hosting with a new name. The host keeps the server running and calls it care. The site itself is still nobody’s job.
• Updates run automatically and nobody checks. The update that breaks the contact form goes unnoticed for weeks.
• The monthly report is a list of plugin names that nobody reads, and says nothing about whether anything was actually wrong.
• Cancelling means losing access. The site, the hosting or the domain sits in the provider’s account, so leaving the plan is harder than it should be. Check who owns the domain before signing anything.
• Too many plugins to look after. A plan cannot fix a site carrying forty plugins it does not need. Trimming them often makes the care cheaper and the site faster.

Comparing plans

Prices vary widely, and the monthly figure on its own tells you very little. Put two plans side by side against the list above: what is updated, how often it is checked, where the backups go, when a restore was last tested, who watches for downtime, how fast someone responds, and what happens if you leave. The cheaper plan often turns out to be the one that leaves the checking to you.

It is also worth knowing what you pay for in the hosting itself, because some plans bundle hosting in and some assume you already have it. Paying for hosting twice is more common than it should be.

Three situations, worked through

A café has a five-page Squarespace site that changes twice a year. The platform does the updates and the backups. A care plan would mostly pay for menu changes they can make themselves in ten minutes. No plan needed.

A physiotherapy clinic takes bookings through a WordPress site. Nobody has updated it since launch, and the booking plugin is three versions behind. This is exactly what a care plan is for. The first month should include a proper backup, a careful round of updates, and a check that bookings still arrive.

A builders’ merchant already pays for a “maintenance package” from their web designer. Asked what it covers, the answer is hosting and updates. There are no off-site backups and nothing watches for downtime. They are not paying too much. They are paying for less than they assumed, and two extra lines in the agreement close the gap.

Five things worth doing

1. Find out what your site runs on: a hosted builder or self-hosted WordPress, or something else.
2. Ask whoever looks after it what they actually do each month, in writing.
3. Ask when a backup was last restored as a test.
4. Check which layers are covered: domain, DNS, hosting, the site, email.
5. Make sure the domain and hosting are in your name, so the plan can be changed without losing the site.

Common misconceptions

• “Our host does backups, so we are covered.” Many hosts keep backups on the same server or for a short time only. Worth knowing how far back you can go and who does the restore.
• “Automatic updates mean no maintenance.” They mean the updating happens. Someone still needs to check the site afterwards.
• “A care plan includes changes.” Small ones, usually, up to a limit. New work is normally quoted separately.
• “Small sites do not get attacked.” Most attacks are automated and look for out-of-date software, not for interesting businesses.

The honest summary

A good care plan covers tested updates, off-site backups with a restore that has actually been tried, uptime monitoring, basic security, a stated response time, and a small allowance for changes. Compare plans on those, not on the monthly price, and make sure the domain and hosting stay in your name.

If the site is a working part of the business, someone should be looking after it, and it should be clear who. If you are not sure what your current arrangement covers, send what you have been told and the gaps are usually easy to spot.